Henry David Thoreau was an American essayist, poet, and philosopher, best known for his book 'Walden' and his essay 'Civil Disobedience.' He was a leading transcendentalist and is remembered for his advocacy of simple living and environmental stewardship.

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.

I found when I had finished my new lecture that it was a very good house, only the architect had unfortunately omitted the stairs.

Every blade in the field - Every leaf in the forest - lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.

I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.

Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.

It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.

It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and another to hear.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before,—a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.

It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.